A Steele Walk Through Fire
by Carla K
Summary: Remington Steele is trapped in a nightmare world - Is it Madness or something more?


  
  
A STEELE WALK THROUGH FIRE  
  
This story is written for pleasure, not profit, and is not meant to infringe on any existing copyrights. Story by Carla J. Keehn. Title provided by Pandorablue33@aol.com.  
  
* * * *  
Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick . . .  
  
It was the steady, mechanical sound of the mantle clock which penetrated the fog that shrouded his mind and brought the prone figure to consciousness.  
  
Remington Steele slowly opened his eyes and glanced around the room, taking a moment to adjust to the darkness of his surroundings.  
  
Was it day . . . or night? From his vantage point on the other side of the room, Steele's attention was drawn to the thick, black draperies that stood like sentinels on duty, keeping even the smallest ray of light from illuminating the gloom.  
  
The dark-haired man shifted uncomfortably as his senses returned. Pain gnawed at his body, pricking at him like a red hot poker. Whatever he was laying on wasn't helping either. The surface beneath him was rough and scratched at his already battered body.  
  
Steele's eyes traveled down. And that's when he saw it . . .  
  
The blood . . .  
  
On the front of his tattered shirt . . . his hands . . . on the surface beneath   
him . . .everywhere . . .  
  
Panic set in immediately. Steele swung his legs to the floor unsteadily. A wave of dizziness rocked him and he sat for a moment, head in his hands.  
  
I must be having a nightmare . . . he thought while he waited for the dizziness to pass. Steele took a deep breath. Pull yourself together . . . he berated himself. You're not some ordinary bloke, you're the famous detective, Remington   
Steele . . .   
  
  
  
He slowly raised his head and looked again his condition. At that moment, he thought he looked more like something that crawled out of a sewer than a famous detective. His silk shirt was torn beyond mending, his tweed trousers mudstained. There was a smell too, rancid and vile, that made his already queasy stomach lurch all the more.  
  
And the blood . . . was still there . . .  
  
Steele's hands visibly shook as he stared at the red blotches on his hands. A frightening image suddenly appeared in his mind.  
  
The blood . . . It was Laura's blood . . .  
  
"No . . ." he said, his voice raspy. A nightmarish image appeared in his mind, the picture of his associate, Laura Holt, cowering on her knees in front of him. Her face was a frozen mask of terror as she cried and pleaded with him not to hurt her.  
  
Disembodied voices whispered fervently beside him, their voices growing louder and louder until he could hardly think over the din. Laura Holt is   
dead . . . You killed her . . . YOU killed her . . .  
  
"Nooo - -" Steele moaned in agony.   
  
There were many times during their partnership when Laura's devotion to whatever case they were working on drove him to distraction. When her reluctance to commit to a relationship frustrated him. She put off his advances more times than he could remember. But no matter how hard Laura tried to discourage him, her actions had only made him want her more.   
  
It wasn't that long ago that he would have considered just taking what he wanted from her, regardless of the woman's feelings. But he was a different man now. Steele knew that he owed everything that he was to Laura. Through her, he'd been given an opportunity to put the past behind him forever.   
  
The voices continued to taunt him. "Killed her . . . killed her . . . killed her . . ."  
  
"NO! I - I couldn't ever hurt her!" He tried to convince himself by saying the words aloud but the image of the frightened Laura continued to haunt him.   
  
Hazy scenes of the past 24 hours railed at him, hovering close at hand, yet remaining out of his grasp. My mind is all mixed up, like a bloody jigsaw puzzle . . . he thought to himself.   
  
The voices suddenly stopped. Steele tried to suppress a shudder as he struggled to gather his thoughts.  
  
He remembered leaving his place for Laura's loft apartment to pick her up for their dinner date. He had reserved a quiet table at the best restaurant in town for the two of them, complete with chilled champagne and softly playing violinists. Steele had resolved that, for once, he was not going to let work get in the way of their relationship.  
  
His blue eyes flickered around the room as he studied the decrepit surroundings around him. Large, hulking images of thread-bare furnishings loomed before him, like run down soldiers on their last legs. Steele shivered. Frigid air filled the room as it rushed in through the disused fireplace.   
  
The place was seedy and broken down. It reminded Steele of a haunted house, the kind you'd find at an amusement park. Hardly what he had in mind for a romantic evening with Laura.  
  
Ding . . . Ding . . . Ding . . .Ding . . . Ding . . .  
  
Steele jumped with a start as the mantle clock came to life again. He counted the chimes silently, ten . . . eleven . . . twelve . . . twelve o'clock . . .  
  
He put a tentative foot down and the wooden floor groaned in protest at the added weight. The tortured man used the last of his strength to push himself up. Shakily, he moved over to the window, falling against the wall for support and flicked a corner of the draperies aside. The windows were shuttered closed but, as far as he could tell, there was no light outside.  
  
Twelve o'clock . . . midnight . . .the time when the wandering souls of the night were restless . . .  
  
"Dracula . . ." he suddenly began, talking faster. "Universal pictures, 1933, Bela Lugosi . . . A man wakes up in castle in Transylvania and finds himself trapped in a nightmare . . ." he murmured. Thinking about his fondness for old movies caused him to relax slightly.   
  
"Just a bad dream . . ." he continued more confidently, hoping that the macabre picture around him would disappear.  
  
But his efforts to dispel the immaterial world around him were fruitless. After a few moments, Steele sighed heavily. His shoulder's slumped forward in defeat. Even if he could wish himself to more pleasant surroundings, there was still the blood on his hands - -  
  
Just then, a sound broke the eerie silence. Steele stiffened, his senses suddenly alert.  
  
After a long moment, he heard the sound again . . .  
  
It started out softly at first, then grew louder and louder, until the faint sobbing turned into a mournful wailing.  
  
"Crying?" Steele whispered in confusion. "Someone's crying . . ." He took a shaky breath. Given a choice, he preferred the crying to the disembodied voices that were plaguing him earlier.  
  
It suddenly occurred to Steele that if he wasn't having a nightmare that maybe, just maybe, he'd crossed the fragile line which separated sanity from madness. Perhaps years of using multiple identities and manufacturing lies to make those identities seem real had finally caused him to snap. He'd seen it happen before, of course, to men that didn't have the sharpened survival instincts that Steele had.  
  
But if that were true, he wondered, why did it happen now, so long after he'd put the past behind him and turned over a new leaf?  
  
He never had a chance to find out if there was an answer to the question. The crying began anew.   
  
The wrenching sobbing tore at him. "Laura . . .?"   
  
Steele shot to his feet. The solution had been staring at him right from the start but he'd been too absorbed in his physical condition to see it. If he was trapped here, then Laura must be too! The only way to end his torment was to find Laura. Find her so they could both escape from the netherworld that had become their prison.  
  
"Laura!" Steele shouted. "Laura, where are you, can you hear me?"  
  
Steele tried to ignore the hammering of his heart as he listened.  
  
"Laura, answer me!" He shouted again with a note of desperation in his voice.   
  
The crying stopped. The only answer to his pleas was the sound of hissing air as it escaped from the antiquated pipes that ran around the base of the walls.  
  
"Have to find her . . ." Steele murmured. He fought back another wave of nausea and staggered out of the room into a darkened hallway.  
  
A thin sliver of moonlight filtered in through the transom above the front door, casting eerie shadows on the walls around him.  
  
Steele paused at the door and gave the knob a firm grasp. "Locked . . ." he murmured. "Windows shuttered closed, doors that don't open . . ."   
  
Escape, if that was possible, was going to be difficult.  
  
He stood at head of the long corridor with great trepidation. Should he press on and hope that he could somehow find Laura and the two could escape? Fear of the unknown began to eat away at his confidence. What if Laura wasn't there - what if she wasn't the one crying? Breaking down the front door and escaping seemed preferable to finding out who - - or what - - was waiting for him at the end of that hallway.  
  
At that moment, a faint voice called out to him, making the decision for him.  
  
"Mr . . . Steele?" He heard the speaker draw a painfilled breath before continuing. "Mr. Steeeeeeele . . ."  
  
Despite the distortion in the voice, he knew it was Laura. With renewed purpose, he hurried towards the direction that he thought the voice was coming from.   
  
"Hurry," the voice implored. "Hurry, it's almost too late . . ."  
  
Steele considered himself a man of the world, a man who had witnessed both the good and the bad inside of all men. But he realized, as he abruptly stopped in the doorway of the room at the end of the hall, that nothing could have prepared him for the sight that was there to greet him.  
  
The specter was there, waiting for him, hunched over in an overstuffed chair, facing away from the door. The dim light from a nearby tiffany lamp cast a distorted image of the slumped figure on a nearby wall.  
  
He stood there a moment, afraid to speak, part of him of wanting to know who was there in that room, part of him dreading knowing.  
  
Then the figure began turning its face towards him, moving pitifully slow.   
  
Steele felt every inch of the agony that must have been coursing through the battered body.  
  
In the auric glow of the lamp, Steele sucked in a sharp breath as he saw the stringy brown hair matted to the face. It was woman, of that he was certain, her clothes torn to shreds, the surface of her body covered in bruises.  
  
The woman raised her face up to the light. One side was swollen beyond belief, but still she managed to speak to him.  
  
"Come back . . to admire your handiwork, Mr. Steele?" She lisped painfully.  
  
"Dear God . . ." he said, reeling in shock. The voice was Laura's but the misshapen creature before him couldn't be her . . . it couldn't be . . .  
  
She seemed to enjoy the reaction that her condition elicited from him. "If not admire," she continued, "perhaps you've come back for more." She slumped back in the chair. "Go on, take what you want," she said, tearing away the last remnants of the shredded fabric that covered her breasts, "I won't fight you this time - - I can't - -"  
  
"No," Steele said, shaking his head to clear it. "Laura, no, let me help you!" he cried, reaching out to her. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but was afraid of the torments that his actions would cause her.   
  
"Too late for that . . ." she whispered, as life slowly slipped away. "I used . . . to think that making love with you . . . would be . . . beautiful . . ." She swallowed hard. "You're a monster . . . an animal . . ." Her breath was coming in painful gasps.  
  
"No, Laura, no!" Steele rushed towards Holt and caught her broken body before it could slip to the floor.   
  
He had descended into the depths of either Madness . . . or Hell . . . Each was a fitting description of his agony.   
  
Steele crushed the limp form to his. "I swear, I didn't do it . . . I couldn't . . . I love you, Laura! Laura, I love you - -"  
  
If only he'd said the words to her before. He felt Holt's body shudder and realized that it was too late. Perhaps she'd heard him, perhaps not. He'd never know.  
  
"Oh, Laura . . .. I should have told you before how much . . . I love you - -"  
  
Finally, mercifully, the darkness overtook Steele. From far away, he heard new voices softly speaking, their words distorted.  
  
"Will he be all right, Doctor . . ." From beside the hospital bed, Laura Holt looked away for a moment from the patient and glanced up at the white haired doctor through tired eyes.  
  
"Yes, I believe so, Miss Holt. Once the drug works through your friend's system, the healing should proceed fairly quickly."  
  
The relief evident on her face, Holt nodded. She felt Steele's grip on her hand tighten suddenly and turned her attention back to the bed, never noticing that the Doctor left the room.  
  
"Never hurt you, Laura . . ." Steele whispered in his delirium.   
  
Holt smoothed the dark hair back from Steele's feverish brow. She'd spent the past few days in turmoil, her emotions raging, at Steele's sudden disappearance. At first she'd wanted to believe that he'd just decided to walk out of her life, without a word. But something inside of Holt refused to let her rest until she was certain. And so, the hunt began, until finally, Steele had been found, drugged and sick, in an abandoned warehouse near the pier.  
  
The trial for the Maddox case was scheduled for next week. Vaughn Maddox was a cunning madman. Arranging for Steele's abduction and drugging him to such a state that his sanity was in question, Steele's credentials as a witness were certain to be torn apart, guaranteeing that Maddox would receive a mistrial. An ingenious plan, one that had almost worked.   
  
"Rest easy now, Mr. Steele, everything is fine . . ." Holt whispered, her lips lightly resting on his.  
  
"Laura? I love you . . . never hurt you . . ."  
  
"Sssh, I know," Holt said soothingly.   
  
He'd said the words to her before of course. But Laura was never quite sure if he was just saying them to break down her resistance to his advances or if he did, in fact, mean them. Deep down, Laura was pleased at whatever demons the drug had produced in Steele's mind for it had opened up new possibilities in their relationship. And there would be time enough later to discuss that relationship, after Steele had recovered from his ordeal.   
  
It was a discussion that Laura looked forward to with great anticipation . . .  
  
The End  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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